Paul Moore was head of group regulatory risk at HBOS until 2004.
Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Observer

When the long-delayed official report into the near-collapse of HBOS is released on Thursday former bank bosses James Crosby, Andy Hornby and Lord Stevenson will be braced for a fresh round of condemnation.

But if the report’s 500 pages are likely to revive painful criticism of their role in the demise of Britain’s biggest mortgage lender and savings institution, its publication also marks a crucial moment for a lesser known former executive at the bank: Paul Moore.

Moore, 57, emerged some years ago as the whistleblower at HBOS. He said he was sacked as head of group regulatory risk at the end of 2004 – less than two years after joining – after warning that the then fast-growing bank was too strongly motivated by sales.

His views were first aired in public shortly after the bank had to be rescued by Lloyds in September 2008. The enlarged institution was later bailed out with £20bn of taxpayer money.

On learning that the publication of the report by the Financial Conduct Authority and Bank of England – first promised in 2013 – has finally been scheduled for Thursday, Moore said: “I’m a bit nervous and a bit frightened and I hope and pray I’m not going to have to fight for the next five years.” His main fear now, he says, is that the report could turn out to be “a cover-up and a fudge”.

If he was writing it, he says, he would refer the directors not just for banning orders but for criminal investigation, as well as demanding a proper judicial inquiry into the auditing of all the big banks and the conduct of the credit ratings agencies.

That is not all. “I would name and shame in the most rigorous detail the ludicrously bad regulators,” says Moore.

Thursday’s report will be published alongside an analysis of the decision by the City regulator at the time of the collapse, the Financial Services Authority, to punish only one HBOS banker – Peter Cummings, who ran the bank’s commercial lending arm and has now been banned for life from the City and fined £500,000.

Work on the official report only began after the enforcement action against Cummings, although in 2013 the parliamentary commission on banking standards, set up in the wake of the Libor-rigging scandal, published its own account of the collapse. It accused Crosby, Hornby and Stevenson of “colossal” management failures and questioned why it was only Cummings who had been censured by the City regulator.

When Moore’s allegations were first aired at the select committee, Crosby had insisted there was no substance to them. A report – commissioned from the bank’s auditors, KPMG – concluded that he lost his job because of personality clashes inside the lender and not that Crosby sacked him because of warnings that HBOS was “going too fast”. Crosby has since handed back his knighthood and 30% of his pension, and keeps out of the public eye.

Moore says he is not seeking vindication himself from the long-delayed report. As far as he is concerned this has already been achieved and he cites a wave of publicity, including an appearance opposite Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight.

But the whistleblowing experience nearly killed him, he says. His book, published this month – Crash Bank Wallop – gives a no-holds-barred account of his private life, his struggle with alcoholism and depression, and describes a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in June this year. Having set up his own publisher – New Wilberforce – to produce the book, he has ambitions for it to become the go-to publisher for whistleblowers. He attributes his survival to his wife Maureen – whom he met up a mountain in Chile on Christmas day 1988 – and his Christianity. A Catholic, he was educated at Ampleforth college, north Yorkshire.

Of the former HBOS bosses, he said: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions … They may have subjectively been thinking what they were doing was right, but they were completely and utterly wrong and they need to be held to account for it.”

But his ire is not only aimed at HBOS officials and non-executive directors. John Griffith-Jones, the boss of the Financial Conduct Authority, the current City watchdog, should quit, he says, because he was formerly chairman of KPMG, auditor of HBOS, as well as a string of other banks.

Moore is himself a former partner at KPMG and it was accountants and professional advisors that failed more than anyone else, he believes.

The ink on his first book is barely dry, but Moore is already preparing his second, with the working title “Love Truth Justice”, in which he aims to lift the lid on the slow pace of the HBOS report.

He has tried to mend fences with Stevenson, Crosby and Hornby – to no avail – and would like a truth and reconciliation commission to be set up.

The former bosses, he believes, should “face up to what they’ve done and have a revelatory moment, and then make amends”.

Then, he says, “we could move on to a new form of caring, clean and collaborative capitalism”.

James Crosby at the start of his career at HBOS in 2002. Photograph: Garry Weaser/The Guardian

THE PLAYERS

James CrosbyChief executive until 2006, Crosby was asked to lead a number of government inquiries after his departure. But after the 2009 parliamentary commission on banking standards report, he asked to be stripped of his knighthood and gave up 30% of his £580,000 a year pension. He also left the board of catering group Compass and private equity house Bridgepoint. “I am deeply sorry for what happened at HBOS,” he has said.

Andy HornbyHornby took over as chief executive from Crosby after running the retail arm of HBOS. He is now the chief operating officer of bookmaker Gala Coral.

Lord StevensonThe first and only chairman of HBOS. He is currently chairing two charities: Inter Mediate, set up by Tony Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan Powell to negotiate in conflict zones, and MQ, which supports mental health research.